


Be Still, My Child

by ambivalentlangst



Series: Into His Fold [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Gen, Infintiy War Fix-It, Peter Parker centric, Physical and Emotional Manipulation, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Tony and May Heavily Referenced, Uncle Ben Referenced, kinda not really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 06:21:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ambivalentlangst/pseuds/ambivalentlangst
Summary: Peter wishes he had stayed as dust. Dust belongs to nobody but the cosmos, infinite in its intricacies. Dust is not forced to stay still with a flex of bejeweled fingers. Dust is not forced to be anything, least of all a child, but Thanos will watch the sun rise with one at his side.





	Be Still, My Child

**Author's Note:**

> Recently I've decided I love Peter Parker, and now I'm stuck writing for Marvel because of it. I should be studying for finals, but here we are with an incredibly self indulgent au. It was an accident, I swear.

Peter blinked a few times, and his fingers curled in the grass at his back, in his hair and surrounding him on all sides. Above him, the sky was blue and clear, while a kind zephyr caressed his cheek. 

 

Peter remembered the rust of Titan, the way the earth of the planet stuck to his skin and stubbornly clung. It had bothered him, silt settling in the lines of his face and making his dry lips salty when he licked them alongside the metallic burn of blood. 

 

Peter remembered the knotting of his stomach, seeing the strange man with grey skin and the woman with big, black eyes turn into nothing but dust while he stared on. He remembered clinging to Tony, begging him to stop the overwhelming sense of dread and despair because Peter couldn’t articulate it properly, but he knew he was next. Tony’s eyes, pools of brown that had looked to Peter with disappointment and trust and pride that were then full of concern while Peter slipped from his fingers. Peter sat up, gasping and trying to remember anything beyond becoming nothing and everything all at once, a cosmic speck amongst an endless universe.

 

Where was he? Where was Tony? Was he even alive? What about May? Ned? MJ? Peter had a thousand questions running through his mind, and they were all washed away in an icy rush of fear as he heard a voice behind him murmur, “And here I thought you would lay forever, boy.”

 

Peter scrambled to his feet and tried not to look afraid as he met Thanos’ eyes. The titan was seated leisurely on a rock, staring at the expanse of nature and seeming calm before them. He motioned to the space next to him, and in response, every limb in Peter’s body locked out before he lunged for him. He wasn’t wearing his suit, he could tell that easily from the way every detail caught his attention and sent his eyes scattering for purchase, but it wasn’t the suit that gave him his abilities. 

 

Thanos merely twitched his fingers, and Peter watched the world spin past him in a whirl of green, his own body undoing its actions to land him back where he’d begun. “Don’t struggle. I have no need to hurt you, boy. I simply asked you to sit. Come, now.” Peter despised the easy way his voice rolled over him. 

 

Thanos was not even irritated by his attempt at an attack. The tone behind what he said seemed to tell him that he could struggle all he wanted, but he would only be an infinitesimal nuisance in the eyes of a god. Peter tried to back away. Thanos clenched his fist and Peter sat in time with a blaze of violet that illuminated their surroundings. “How do you feel, child?” Thanos asked. 

 

Peter said nothing. This was Thanos, he couldn’t give him an inch. He had to stay quiet, stay still and make Tony proud, wherever he was. Thanos chuckled. “A stubborn thing, are you? Tell me your name, boy.” 

 

Peter bit his lip hard enough to draw blood. Yellow light flashed so brightly it agonized his heightened senses, and Peter buried his face in his hands with a hoarse shout torn involuntarily from him. “Peter!” 

 

Peter shuddered as heavy fingers settled atop his head, toying with his hair lightly, comfortingly. Peter hated it, hated the touch with a passion. “I’m Peter.”

 

“You’re a brave boy, Peter,” Thanos praised him. “A mere child, fighting a battle you nothing about. Futile though your efforts are, I admire you for them.” 

 

Peter gritted his teeth, turning to stare up at the titan. “You don’t know anything.” Peter spat, trying to knock his hand away. It had been a positively unfeasible task to try and get the gauntlet off the other one, and he hadn’t forgotten just how substantial the weight of it was, even with his advanced strength. “I’m not a kid!” He was so  _ tired  _ of everyone saying he was, like that somehow made what he was doing inconsequential. He wanted to help, could help,  _ did help,  _ and everyone tried to brush that aside. His expression tightened, a muscle in his cheek twitching while his jaw clenched.

 

“I have lost many children in my sacrifice for the stones,” Thanos replied calmly.

 

Peter thought of the fury that had gripped the older Peter, the man who had put a gun to his head in search of Gamora. Peter had no face to put with the name.

 

He remembered the blue-skinned woman made of odd bits and pieces of tech, her raspy words and the horror within them, and shoved Thanos as hard as he could. It was like trying to move a cliff. “That’s your fault,” he accused him and despised how his voice trembled. Losing family was not a foreign concept to him.

 

_ Flashing sirens and his uncle’s blood all over the ground. Ben wasn’t moving, and they’d brought Peter back to May with blood on his favorite shirt because they’d just gone to go get dinner and then there were shots and Ben yelling at him to get down and then nothing at all. _

 

“Maybe so,” Thanos answered, and Peter noticed the first traces of anything other than wisened, crazed superiority and calm in his tone. Remorse. “But I have a duty to the universe. I could not allow her to stand in the way.”

 

Peter shuddered. Thanos had drawn his hand away at last, but simply remembering the touch made his skin crawl. “So what am I here for?” he demanded to know, voice taut. He was sitting, just  _ sitting _ with a man—monster—who had slaughtered half of the entire universe.

 

Thanos was silent and Peter remained tense.

 

“I have finished my duty, and it is time for me to gain another child. Mine have been killed or deserted me.” Peter felt his blood run cold. He thought of the blue woman and hoped she was far, far away from wherever they were. He wished he was with her. Surely, no harm could befall someone so strong and fierce, who took Thanos on with a snarl. More than that, he wished for Tony. The man he had always looked up to, the man who would always have the image of him turning to ash in his arms in his memory. Peter wanted to go back to that one simple moment, to feel safe in his embrace for a fraction of a second. “Sorry, I don’t really roll with adoption by mass murderers,” Peter spat. 

 

A bark of laughter from Thanos, who Peter still wouldn’t look at. His heart slammed against his chest wildly, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Thanos’ fist clench again. It was enough of a glance to allow Peter to tense, allowed him a moment to brace himself, but it still made it no easier to have his heartbeat forcibly slowed, making his body calm despite his racing thoughts.

 

“It is not murder, Peter,” Thanos explained. “It is mercy. Would you rather that trillions slowly waste away, starve to death over months, years and continue to bring more hungry mouths into the world all the while?” 

 

Peter felt his anger rise up despite the physical force keeping his body stable. “You’re insane.” 

 

Thanos ruffled his hair again, and Peter flinched. “You are young. Full of potential. With me, Peter, you will be more. I have brought you back for a reason.” Peter’s breath caught in his throat. He knew he had been dead, but it still made it no easier to deal with. Thanos paid no mind to his hesitance. “Your father could not unlock it with his metal toys, the suit he gave you.” 

 

Peter stiffened. “Mr. Stark isn’t my dad,” he rebuffed him quickly. 

 

Thanos hummed. “Perhaps not by birth, but I have enough children that are not my own by blood to see the connection.” 

 

Peter felt something within him twist at that. He was quite sure that very few of Thanos’ so-called children were proud of the title. “Yeah, and I kick enough stray dogs to call them mine, too,” Peter snapped. Thanos did not respond to that.

 

“There’s no need to be scared, my child,” he told him, wiping at a tear Peter hadn’t realized he allowed to slip down his cheek. 

 

He recoiled sharply, shoving at the touch. “I’m not your kid!” he shouted, trying desperately to move away from the titan. He was able to gain a few feet of space before his body snapped back into place against his will, and he met Thanos’ eyes. Peter was only more terrified by the fact that he truly saw no malicious intent there, only a sort of aged expectancy and faint concern. He wanted May, to smell her discount shampoo and feel her rub his arm while he cried and she told him everything would be okay.

 

“I could kill her for you if it would make it easier to accept this,” Thanos offered. 

 

Peter visibly panicked at the idea, unable to help himself. “No, no! Don’t hurt May!” he yelled. 

 

Thanos nodded, staring past Peter and looking at the sky. “If that is what you wish.” They lapsed into silence, Peter’s chest heaving as he tried to muster the energy to move. He’d try to make his legs work, try to lift a hand to at least give Thanos a proper punch in the face, but he was glued to the spot. 

 

Thanos shattered the quiet with his rumbling voice, the hand in the gauntlet pointing to the horizon. “Look at the sun, Peter. See how it shines over the new day that you and I will shape.” 

 

Peter almost choked on his spit, and his words were far too small and pleading when they came forth. “I don’t  _ want _ to.” 

 

Thanos did not hesitate to reply. “I had another child who thought very similarly. She distanced herself from me, but I don’t think I’ll have that problem again.” 

 

Peter’s deft eyes caught the twinkle of the gems in the gauntlet. “You act like you’ve already won,” Peter hissed, fingers blissfully curling in on themselves. A small rebellion that Peter savored. “Like there’s not half of the Avengers still out there, ready to take you down.”

 

_ Please come. Please help, I’ll do anything, just save me. _

 

Peter noticed Thanos running a thumb over the yellow stone, one Peter recognized from its place on the battlefield in Germany.

 

“Even you do not believe your words, my child. It is alright. You may be weak, right now. Now is not a time where you must be strong.” 

 

Peter hated that his body seemed to take the permission seriously, and hated the fact that he couldn’t lift a hand to wipe his quickly dampening eyes even more. “Where are we?” Peter demanded to know in a rapid change of pace, putting forth bravado that he didn’t feel in the slightest.

 

“On your Earth,” Thanos told him. “I do not know the land well enough to be certain, but we are not very far from where the Avengers last made their stand.” Peter hunched over, thinking of the battle at the airport that now seemed incredibly futile. Not so far away there was a man who had dropped a terminal on him, a woman who could cast him to the ground with a simple thought, and a man who had been an assassin for the better part of a century. He hoped there was, anyway. He wanted the Avengers, his heroes, to be saved from the sway of the monstrosity sitting next to him. They were the strongest people in the world. Peter wondered if they’d be capable of fighting this if they were in his shoes, the power keeping him in place. He needed them to be capable because if not, there was nothing left to do but be forced under its sway.

 

_ Somebody, anybody save me, save me, please. _

 

“I’m not your kid,” Peter whispered. 

 

Thanos sighed and ruffled Peter’s hair. “You weren’t before,” he conceded. Peter had no response.

 


End file.
